Tag: George Bush

George W. Bush Congratulates Biden And Harris, Calls Election ‘Fundamentally Fair’

The 43rd president called Joe Biden a “good man” and offered him “prayers for his success.”

Former President George W. Bush on Sunday congratulated President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory and said Americans can have confidence that the election was “fundamentally fair.”

Bush, a two-term Republican president, called Biden a “good man” despite their “political differences.”

“I just talked to the President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden,” Bush said in a statement. “I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night. I also called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her historic election to the vice presidency.” Continue reading.

Obama delivers call to action in eulogy for Lewis, likens tactics by Trump and administration to those by racist Southern leaders who fought civil rights

Washington Post logoFormer president Barack Obama delivered a call to action in his eulogy Thursday of late congressman John Lewis, urging Congress to pass new voting rights laws and likening tactics by President Trump and his administration to those used by racist Southern leaders who fought the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Obama, speaking for 40 minutes at the pulpit where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, tied Lewis’s early life as a Freedom Rider to the nationwide protests that followed the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. He compared today’s federal agents using tear gas against peaceful protesters, an action that Trump has cheered on, to the same attacks Lewis faced on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

“Bull Connor may be gone, but today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans,” the nation’s first Black president said at Lewis’s final memorial service. “George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators. We may no longer have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to cast a ballot, but even as we sit here there are those in power who are doing their darndest to discourage people from voting.” Continue reading.

Three presidents embrace the struggle for rights. Trump suggests postponing the election.

Washington Post logoThree presidents spoke in poetry, paying tribute to a fallen hero who believed — often against evidence to the contrary, including the cracking of his skull by state troopers — that America was good, its people driven by love to do right by one another.

One president, the current commander in chief, did not attend the funeral of Rep. John Lewis but instead spoke of dark forces in the country and suggested that the United States not hold its next presidential election on time.

In a country cleaved by political differences, paralyzed by a pernicious virus and suffering from a plunging economy, Thursday presented painful contrasts. It was a day of soaring tributes to the first Black lawmaker to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, offered from the pulpit of the mother church of the modern civil rights movement. And it was a day of pointed reminders that the nation is struggling, even after 244 years, to define itself, to decide what freedom and equality will mean. Continue reading.

Bush Claimed Power to Override a Torture Ban. What Did Brett Kavanaugh Think About That? Image

The following article by Charlie Savage was posted on the New York Times website July 29, 2018:

Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, handled draft signing statements when working as staff secretary for President George W. Bush. Credit: Erin Schaff for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — When Brett M. Kavanaugh came before the Judiciary Committee in May 2006 for his nomination to be an appeals court judge, senators pressed him on his role in President George W. Bush’s use of signing statements to claim the power to bypass new laws — like a much-disputed assertion the previous December that he could override a ban on torture.

Judge Kavanaugh, who at the time was the White House staff secretary, acknowledged handling draft signing statements to ensure that “relevant members of the administration have provided input” before presenting them to Mr. Bush. But the nominee sidestepped questions about any advice or views he had about them, refusing to discuss “internal matters” and pivoting instead to a description of a 1952 Supreme Court opinion that explains how to analyze separation-of-powers disputes in general.

Now that President Trump has nominated Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the opacity of his testimony about Mr. Bush’s signing statements, including about the torture ban, is becoming a case study for Democrats’ vehement arguments that the Senate must see his staff secretary files before any confirmation hearing. Democrats have already been raising concerns that Judge Kavanaugh may hold too expansive a view of executive power in other contexts, like his skepticism about the wisdom of forcing a president to answer questions in criminal investigations.

View the complete article here.